Last month, IBM made an announcement that put an end to any hope of an open source OS/2. Responding to requests from an online community that had previously collected 11,600 signatures in support of its cause, the company confirmed that they would not be releasing the source code of their OS/2 operating system. I used OS/2 as my main operating system for about four years, and unlike some former users, my reaction to the news sits somewhere between disinterest and relief.

I have used OS/2 since the 1.0 release on a PS/2 286 with a wopping 4 MB of RAM and since OS/2 4.0 I haven't seen any OS coming close to the multitasking and multithreading performance OS/2 delivered.

The stability of the OS was always guaranteed whether or not a program crashed. I haven't found this capability in any other OS so far, not in BSD, not in Linux variants and alas certainly not in Windows.

If there is one thing other OS's could learn from OS/2 it is the multithreading and multitasking model incorporated in OS/2. Outdated? Maybe. Surpassed? Not even close.

I have to agree with you. Os/2 is rock stable. Just like most of Unix variants. I know person who used to run it from version 3.0 to version 4.0 on small server. I've hear lots of stories of his "OBallGr.Zero"-server.

If his story is true, longest perioid operating system /2 was able to keep on going was 1,5 years without rebooting.

I have the Os/2 Warp 3.0 floppies I got from him. I haven't been able to run it since I lack the hardware.